Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) was a Dutch painter who co-founded the De Stijl movement and developed neoplasticism, an abstract style built from straight black lines, the three primary colors, and white.
Born in Amersfoort, Netherlands, in 1872, Mondrian began as a representational landscape painter before working through Neo-Impressionism and Cubism toward pure abstraction. Stranded in the Netherlands during the First World War, he met Theo van Doesburg and Bart van der Leck, and in 1917 the group founded De Stijl — both a journal and a movement — which became the vehicle for Mondrian's emerging theory.
In De Stijl he articulated neoplasticism (Nieuwe Beelding): a program that rejected representational subject matter in favor of painting's most basic elements — the straight line, the primary colors red, yellow, and blue, and the neutrals black, white, and gray — composed into asymmetrical yet balanced arrangements. Informed by his theosophist beliefs, Mondrian treated this austere geometry as a path toward a universal, underlying harmony. The resulting grid paintings of black horizontal and vertical lines bounding blocks of primary color became his signature and among the most recognizable images of twentieth-century art, endlessly echoed across fashion, design, and architecture.
I've loved Mondrian since discovering his work in a 101 Art History class in college — and in hindsight he's a substantial influence on my present-day 📝Kindergarten Chic aesthetic.